


House of Memories

by RomulanAle



Series: OC Drabbles [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 11:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13363800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RomulanAle/pseuds/RomulanAle
Summary: This is just a very basic, non-detailed Elliot timeline that I wrote while listening to Death of a Bachelor, so enjoy.





	House of Memories

Elliot was very young, about thirteen years old, when he stole his parents’ wine for the first time. For a long time afterward, he couldn’t explain what drove him to the cellar. At the age of nineteen, after he was checked into rehab for the first time, his counselor told him it was because he was rebelling against his parents, getting drunk just to spite them. All Elliot remembered was crying, was being lonely, was stumbling down the elegant staircase, not bothering to be quiet because his parents weren’t home, and his nanny had had to leave after lunch. He had bruises on his arms and legs that were from kids at school and scabs on his wrist that weren’t.

He chose a vintage. A 1961 Bordeaux. Not that he cared what the year or type of brew the drink was, only that it was there and he was taking it and nobody was there to stop him. It was a little difficult for Elliot to get the bottle open, but he had seen his mother drink the stuff often enough to know the basics. He scratched off the foil with his nails and found a corkscrew in the cutlery drawer. His hands were shaking and sweating, but he twisted the corkscrew in and managed to yank the cork out.

It tasted bitter to him and he winced, but there was something enjoyable about the bite on his tongue, the pungent aroma, the way the bottle felt in his hands: a comforting weight.

He drank the entire bottle before he threw up and fell asleep on the floor of the bathroom.

Elliot was fifteen when his parents got divorced and he threw his first party in the empty house. It was a night that he would remember for the rest of his life. People from school had come to Elliot’s house to drink and smoke weed for a while, but never more than a handful. That night there must have been about one hundred kids wandering around Elliot’s large house. He barely knew some of them and didn’t know most of them. Elliot felt sick and wanted to get fresh air. He was barely buzzed, but he was crying. He was so lonely, always lonely, no matter how many drunk teenagers were destroying his house.

Elliot was on one of the balconies smoking a cigarette when _He_ wiped his tears away and offered him pills for the first time. _He_ was a year older than Elliot, taller, and much more confident. They had hung out together before, smoked dope and drank and laughed and kissed. _He_ sold Elliot weed and stayed to help smoke it for free. Elliot looked up to _Him_. Elliot admired _Him_. Elliot loved _Him_.

“If you really want to feel better,” _He_ had said, staring at Elliot with hazy brown eyes, “You should try these. Oxycodone. More expensive than weed, but they’ll fix you right up, Ellie. The first sample is always free.”

And Elliot had stuck his hand out, watched as the two offending pills bit into his palms, and swallowed them obediently. Elliot was praised for his choice, both by _Him_ and the other kids on the balcony who cheered when the pills had slid past his lips. He felt his hands be held as he was pulled deeper into the house, towards his room.

_He_ was right, of course. Elliot felt a lot better.

At the age of seventeen, Elliot came home with a black eye and a broken nose and bruises on his throat and a broken heart. He overdosed on oxycodone and wine.

When he was eighteen, Elliot stopped buying oxycodone. It was too expensive. It didn’t get him as high anymore. It was harder to find. His mother had stopped giving him an allowance over a year ago, and he could never hold down a job. He stole jewelry and pawned heirlooms, but that would only get him through a week at best. He was begging one of his dealers to cut him a break when she recommended he try heroine. They were still in the dirty ally when she pushed up the sleeve of his expensive shirt and grabbed his boney wrist, exposing his forearm. He ended up always buying heroine instead, after that.

When he was nineteen, Elliot forgot what it was like to feel sober. If he went more than a handful of hours without alcohol or weed or heroine he felt himself start to die. He felt shaky, nauseous, sweaty, and his headaches were almost constant. He slept almost all day. His mother wanted to kick him out, but she never had the heart to do it. Instead, she checked him into rehab. He stayed in the facility for eighteen months.

At the age of twenty-one, Elliot was accepted into a private university. He was majoring in business, he had a steady girlfriend. He refused to drink. He didn’t smoke anymore. Nobody at his new school knew about his past. His father started speaking to him again. His younger sister took him out to lunch whenever he had a break from school. He had a job working for his mother’s company.

By the time he was twenty-two, Elliot didn’t have a girlfriend anymore. He had a fiancée.

The trip to Las Vegas was unplanned. Mia had wanted to go during spring break. Elliot was twenty-three and Mia was twenty-one. She knew that he didn’t drink, though she didn’t know why, and she insisted that they could go without doing anything risky. He had agreed to go because it meant a lot to her, and she meant a lot to him. They were there for two days before he caught another man in their hotel room. Mia quickly got dressed and followed Elliot to the street, calling after him and making excuses and Elliot took a cab and got lost and went to the nearest bar and got so trashed he fell asleep in an alley.

He didn’t go home. He found a job in a bar and slept outside and lived there for a while. He went on a binge and partied and ended up with HIV and a stab wound before he decided that he needed to get an actual apartment. He put the ad up on a Saturday and got a response that Monday.

Elliot was twenty-four when he fell in love for the third time in his life. Elliot and Ben and Thomas had been living together for a little under a year, and they were all standing in the kitchen in varying stages of dress, pans and laptops out and cupboards open and Thomas’s phone was plugged into the speaker and Ben was desperately trying to follow the directions to make a Boston cream pie but Elliot kept hiding the ingredients and laughing and Thomas refused to do anything about it but play a game of “Warmer, Colder” until Ben found what he needed. When Elliot took out a cigarette Ben snatched it and threw it off the fire escape and shoved a spoon covered in batter into Elliot’s hands instead.

Elliot reconnected with his family, if for nothing else than to see their faces when he introduces his two boyfriends. It was very much worth it.


End file.
